Thread: Covid Vaccines

Back to the drawing board

Coronavirus Australia: UQ COVID vaccine deal cancelled after HIV false positive results in participants

Taken from here for extra reading

Australian Breaking News Headlines & World News Online | SMH.com.au

Don't really care when Australia gets it, they won't be sticking it in my arm.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Back to the drawing board

Coronavirus Australia: UQ COVID vaccine deal cancelled after HIV false positive results in participants

Taken from here for extra reading

Australian Breaking News Headlines & World News Online | SMH.com.au

Chris, DW was specifically referring to the Pfizer vaccine. Whole different thing and not to be compared.

Originally Posted by China

Don't really care when Australia gets it, they won't be sticking it in my arm.

That is, of course, entirely a decision for yourself that should be taken with the advice of your primary health carer.

No idea what that has to do with this discussion, but; good to know.

Last I heard it was planned to start in March next year

Originally Posted by D.W.

I haven't visited the health section in a while and am assuming covid isn't a banned topic (it's been banned on some forums in the US as it goes a predictable direction).

Early on, our death count was high compared to australia but relatively low given the way it was brought into the country and found out about later. Since then, the middle of the country has gone bonkers with about half of the population deciding that they just don't care at all either way.

The only COVID infections in this country right now are those brought in from returning expatriates. There was also a small outbreak from one of the quarantining travellers via a security guard at the quarantine location, but has also since been brought under control.

For all intents and purposes; we are COVID free, and people are largely just living their lives. We are in this position because the vast majority (actual, as in; not the [alleged] "silent" majority conservative politicians like to talk about...) of Australian people took this seriously from the start. That was largely driven by the fact that politicians across the spectrum here did not try to politicise public health.

What happened in the USA is criminal negligence, and that would be the minimum charge!

That was the good news. The less good news is that if we do get an outbreak; it is going to spread quickly given that people are not really exercising the amount of caution it probably warrants. I'm basing that observation on Facebook posts by the younger generations of my family. If it happens, it won't be pretty.

That said, the odds of that happening are not very high; but not zero.

Originally Posted by D.W.

Notably, we've got two vaccines ready, expected to be approved in less than a week. The mrs. works casual (a few times a month) in a wound care practice and has been working, anyway, despite covid (Actually, the health system has had to make some service for casual employees mandatory as the whole pool just decided they weren't going to work). None of us has gotten covid that I'm aware of. My sister's kids did, but they are 14 and had mild symptoms (twins - more accurate to say one had a light fever for a day and the other never developed any symptoms at all - both tested positive, their third kid didn't get it from them and neither did either adult. Fortunately, for them, neither kid ever coughed or sneezed, which probably prevented them from blowing droplets into the air an any quantity).

That said, my mrs. got a text this week that she needed to respond by the end of the day to schedule the pfizer vaccine, potentially next friday. I'm guessing there must be info sent under the radar to health systems about approval and the announcement is a formality (Besides, the English decided to be early guinea pigs).

I'll get a vaccine as soon as it's available. The mrs will likely get one next friday or the friday after.

What's the whole thing look like in australia? Same timeline? later? sooner? I understand the covid numbers to be quite low there. The case rate is super high here, but the second wave, while it's brought plenty of deaths, has been kept out of nursing homes better, so the death rate per case is much lower.

People discovering for the first time they are allergic to a substance is arguably the biggest concern. For instance; my father at the age of 83 discovered he was allergic to penicillin. He found that out after he was admitted to hospital and went into anaphylactic shock after being given amoxicillin. Probably the world's most commonly used antibiotic. It is statistically improbable that my father had not had it in the past. And yet, he ended up in ICU. He recovered and he is fine.

We are looking at getting vaccinations beginning in late February into March. Given our (effectively) Covid-free status, we will be fine.

Originally Posted by D.W.

I'm in my mid 40s with no conditions other than mild obesity (200 pounds at 5'9") and very mild asthma - chances are, I'd get a mild case that would be about as taxing as the vaccine, but I'll be getting the latter, anyway.

One of my lady docs was in the test pool for the moderna vaccine and mentioned that while she doesn't officially know if she got placebo, she got a searing headache after the first vaccine shot, and then second shot gave her extreme fatigue for two days, and then went away pretty quickly - in her words, the fatigue was like needing to pick your legs up to walk because they wouldn't go far enough on their own.

There is a phenomenon called the Nocebo effect and that is factored into drug and vaccine trials. Obviously I am not in a position to know if that is what happened in this case.

Originally Posted by D.W.

As far as side effects go, I expect the reports of adverse reactions to continue to increase. When one of the two testers (and maybe both) did their trials, they excluded anyone who had ever had certain allergies, as well as specific allergies to components of the vaccine or any instance of past anaphylaxis. I think some folks will be learning that they have allergies, but compared to doing nothing with half of the nutballs around here tooting "masks don't work, it's just a cold!!! the deaths are exaggerated!", it seems like there's little reason to refuse to get the two shots.

Stupid people is not a fixable problem. Stupid people in positions of power they have no right to hold is. The majority of voters at the recent election fixed a large part of the problem, but not all of it.

Originally Posted by markharrison

Chris, DW was specifically referring to the Pfizer vaccine. Whole different thing and not to be compared.

That was not clear to me, he asked how things were going in Oz with no specific reference to Pfizer in the sentence.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

That was not clear to me, he asked how things were going in Oz with no specific reference to Pfizer in the sentence.

Originally Posted by D.W.

...
That said, my mrs. got a text this week that she needed to respond by the end of the day to schedule the pfizer vaccine, potentially next friday.
...

The emphasis is mine. You missed it. Don't worry about it.

Originally Posted by D.W.

it's just a cold!!! the deaths are exaggerated!

So here's another practical application of statistics, and it looks a lot like expected price calculations in Finance.

So lets pretend we have 2 diseases, A and B, and A has a mortality rate of 1% and B a rate of 2%. You have a 50% chance of getting A, and a 10% chance of getting B.

So to get expected mortality per 1000 of population = mortality X chance of catching X1000

A: .01 X .5 X 1000 = 5
B: .02 X .1 X 1000 = 2

Even though the mortality rate of A is half that of B, it results in more deaths because more people will get it.
That is simple enough to understand, so lets use some 'real*' figures. *no one agrees on actual figures, which vary by country, state, etc, so lets just use some non extreme values

Covid: chance to catch 60%, mortality 2.5% (.6 X .025 X 1000)
Flu: chance to catch 10%, mortality .1% (.1 X .001 X 1000)

Covid = 15 per 1000
Flu = .1 per 1000

So the key here is transmissibility. We have vaccines for flu. It is harder to transmit from person to person even without that. That transmission multiplier makes an enormous difference. Where the mortality ratio alone is 25:1, the transmission factor pushes it to 150:1 which is 6 times higher.

We can argue the numbers, but the principle remains, I hope this helps to visualise the issue.

Originally Posted by markharrison

There is a phenomenon called the Nocebo effect and that is factored into drug and vaccine trials. Obviously I am not in a position to know if that is what happened in this case.

Stupid people is not a fixable problem. Stupid people in positions of power they have no right to hold is. The majority of voters at the recent election fixed a large part of the problem, but not all of it.

I saw my doc again this past week - asked her about the vaccine. She relayed that she and her husband both had side effects, and both got antibody testing about a month later (both tested positive for antibodies, so they're unlikely nocebo cases).

i'd imagine nocebo cases are a little bit less drastic than their side effects (but realistically, even though both had stiff side effects for a couple of days, they only had them a couple of days). She did mention this time that her husband had a very high fever (104) for an adult and it took a few days for it to finally break (it wasn't that high the whole time, but that's alarming for an adult).

(they both received the moderna vaccine - I asked her if moderna contacted her to confirm that she got the real vaccine and not a placebo, which pfizer said they would do, and she said they hadn't and she didn't know if they would. I think the pair of antibody tests for her husband and her - both never had any other covid symptoms from getting the real thing, is probably proof enough).

As far as the voting, we solved one problem by creating another incompetent one. Hopefully the coming elderly incompetence will be more favorable than the last maniac incompetence. I don't think the australian idea of shutting everything down would fly here, though. I don't know that it could even be applied legally. The reality is that in the US if you actually want to avoid getting the virus, it's not that hard. If you want to avoid having other people get it, it's not that easy. We know a fair number of people now who have had it. I don't know anyone who can legitimately say they have no idea how they got it. I don't know anyone personally who died, but do know the grandmother of an acquaintance died in a nursing home (she was in her 90s).

Originally Posted by D.W.

I saw my doc again this past week - asked her about the vaccine. She relayed that she and her husband both had side effects, and both got antibody testing about a month later (both tested positive for antibodies, so they're unlikely nocebo cases).

i'd imagine nocebo cases are a little bit less drastic than their side effects (but realistically, even though both had stiff side effects for a couple of days, they only had them a couple of days). She did mention this time that her husband had a very high fever (104) for an adult and it took a few days for it to finally break (it wasn't that high the whole time, but that's alarming for an adult).

(they both received the moderna vaccine - I asked her if moderna contacted her to confirm that she got the real vaccine and not a placebo, which pfizer said they would do, and she said they hadn't and she didn't know if they would. I think the pair of antibody tests for her husband and her - both never had any other covid symptoms from getting the real thing, is probably proof enough).

The only other way to acquire the antibodies is to have had it. So it sounds to me that that this wasn't placebo.

I have read about the reactions that some people have experienced with the vaccine since its release to the public and these reactions are similar to what I have read. It isn't going to stop me taking it.

Originally Posted by D.W.

As far as the voting, we solved one problem by creating another incompetent one. Hopefully the coming elderly incompetence will be more favorable than the last maniac incompetence. I don't think the australian idea of shutting everything down would fly here, though. I don't know that it could even be applied legally. The reality is that in the US if you actually want to avoid getting the virus, it's not that hard. If you want to avoid having other people get it, it's not that easy. We know a fair number of people now who have had it. I don't know anyone who can legitimately say they have no idea how they got it. I don't know anyone personally who died, but do know the grandmother of an acquaintance died in a nursing home (she was in her 90s).

Don't know a lot about the President elect or the Vice President elect apart from what I see in the media. I don't have an opinion about their collective competence. Yet.

I do have an opinion about the incumbent's competence. I'm pretty sure it would be spectacularly difficult to slide under that bar.

Our own conservative federal government has shown that basic competence is not tied to ideology. Was their response perfect? Hell no. They still could not resist playing politics with public health during one state election this year. But neither was it spectacularly incompetent.

I think they still haven't fully thought through the impacts of withdrawing aid too soon and we stand a greater chance of sliding into a rather deep recession. Time will tell.

For the record, I am not a conservative. I just think it's fair to acknowledge that the current conservative government have not failed spectacularly.

Had this government been led by the conservative Prime Minister before the last one; we would have been sinking right along side you! He was so incompetent the highly conservative electorate he formerly represented elected a conservative independent in place of him at the last Federal general election. I know that area well. I have lived there. That was an amazing outcome in my opinion.

And hasn’t she done an amazing job - NOT!
I don’t know whether you live there now but many people who do live there now are looking at bringing back a main stream party person at the next election and ditch the Independent.

No so amazing either - what about John Howard and Maxine McKew. She unseated a sitting Prime Minister! However she only lasted one term.

Originally Posted by markharrison

The only other way to acquire the antibodies is to have had it. So it sounds to me that that this wasn't placebo.

I have read about the reactions that some people have experienced with the vaccine since its release to the public and these reactions are similar to what I have read. It isn't going to stop me taking it.

Nor me - I just will have to plan to take it on a day that I'm not presenting something to a client the following day. I wouldn't like having a fever like that, but that was the husband of my doc. She had what she described as an unusual headache and site soreness (or whole arm soreness) where she got the injection, but I think I relayed that was only a day, and the body soreness after the second shot was only a day or two.

She also said that her husband is lacking in toughness, but I'd give him the benefit of the doubt with a fever that high. She also said that after several days, his fever broke overnight and the next day he was up as if he'd never had a side effect.

I'd bet the meningitis vaccine is far more dangerous.

Originally Posted by Lappa

And hasn’t she done an amazing job - NOT!
I don’t know whether you live there now but many people who do live there now are looking at bringing back a main stream party person at the next election and ditch the Independent.

I don't have an opinion. I don't live there anymore. My Niece, Nephew, Sister-in-law and their partners do (none of whom are conservative) and they have not said anything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A blue plank would be better than having Tony (Ten Flags) Abbott in the parliament, let alone as Prime Minister; or scheming to get the job!

Originally Posted by Lappa

No so amazing either - what about John Howard and Maxine McKew. She unseated a sitting Prime Minister! However she only lasted one term.

Howard was well past his use-by date by 2007. He should have left the parliament sometime mid way through his last term and handed over the reins.

Ms McKew did both major parties a favour. Getting elected in a marginal electorate, ousting a sitting Prime Minister, and going into government is better than I (or you) have done. I would not describe that as a failure!